Campground summer

Correction to the list of characters - Lisa was Liz.

Anyway, there was lots of partying, lots of campfires, and lots of drama. At one point early in the summer, K reunited with his old buddy Albert. Albert's sister lived in the same trailer park and he and his wife Gleta. That trailer park also happened to be across the state line in PA.

One particular day, K had been out somewhere drinking all day long. When he came home, I told him that Albert had stopped by earlier looking for him and had invited us to his place. I was afraid not to tell him for fear of being accused of withholding information. So, as drunk as he already was, I got on the back of the motorcycle with him and we drove up to Albert's. No helmets (MD did not have a helmet law at the time, but PA did). He drank and drank some more. Albert's sister was there too. I guess he'd always had a thing for her and he was flirting big time. Eventually, the party wound down and Albert said we could sleep on his couch since K was so drunk. Albert's dog was in heat and K was rubbing against her, trying to say she wanted him to hump her! I definately drew a line there and got up. He followed me and apologized and said we should leave.

Dumb dumb dumb. I even continued the argument after we were on the bike again, saying "wouldn't you rather stay there with Albert's sister and/or his dog" He pulled over and told me to get off or he'd plant me in one of these cornfields. I got off and started walking the other direction. It only lasted about 2 minutes, then he turned around and came back for me. At first, I refused to get on again, but he finally scared me enough to do it. We drove silently back into MD. There was a chopper bike riding in the same direction and K decided it was a good time to race this dude. I don't know where dude went, but I know we were going REALLY fast.

The road curved to the left. K went straight. We hit a drainage ditch and went airborne. I don't know how we didn't hit any of the trees in the small wooded lot where we landed. The bike landed on it's front wheel and snapped the king/queen seat in half, catapulting me from the bike. I landed head first, tried to break my fall with my left arm. That resulted in an evulsion fracture in my wrist (thumb side - dunno if that's ulna or radius). My arm gave way and the left side of my face hit the dirt and leaves. My feet tried to come down behind me, like a back-flip, and sprained my mid and lower back (right side).

I remember waking up in the worst pain I'd felt so far in my life. I knew better, but straightened my legs out anyway. I couldn't lift my left arm, so pulled it to my chest for a more comfortable position. I could hear K calling to me - asking if I could ride. HAHAHAHAHA! I couldn't really MOVE, let alone RIDE. He got mad at me for that but came to my side. He'd bumped his head and was sore, but was otherwise uninjured. Figures, huh.

A guy came out of one of the nearby houses and told us he'd called the ambulance. He also said "you've got enough trouble. you were run off the road by a car. got it? you were run off the road by a car." And that was the story we stuck with. K was so drunk, he actually believed it. The ambulance took me to the hospital and the cops took K to jail for refusal to provide a breath sample. I stayed in the hospital for a day or 2, then went back to the campground with a cast on my left arm, a back brace, and a bottle of pills.

At the campground...

Except for never having money, living at the campground was actually pretty cool in the most basic sense. I got to collect wood everyday (just limbs that fell naturally, I wasn't chopping down trees or anything) and build an awesome campfire everynight. We made friends with quite a few characters.

Ronnie & Barb. He was a roofer and drew unenjoyment all winter long. She was a SAH pothead. They had a black lab puppy named Molly and 2 kitties.

Richard & ??. He mowed grass at the nearby Army base. She was a SAHM to 2 boys. She was the first Mormon I'd ever met. They had a pet ferret and lived in a bus converted into a camper.

Mike and Lisa(?). He collected disability for something and she was the daughter of a big pig farmer. They had a 2 yr old little girl. K took a special interest in Lisa.

Dan(?). He lived near Pittsburgh but stayed in a pickup truck camper during the week. He was a foreman on some high paying construction job. His crew worked 4 ten hour days. I was sort of crushing on him but never did anything more than have a few dreams.

At first, K & I slept in the back of our pickup truck. It had a cap and we laid a piece of plywood across the wheel humps, then put our mattress on top of it. We had the space under the plywood for storage. It was a cozy sleep but a little freaky at the same time. It was close quarters and sometimes we forgot which direction we were laying. One night, K almost kicked out the front window trying to get out the wrong way.

There was a BlueGrass Festival one weekend. A LOT of campers showed up. They had music and contests and fun. Richard got skunk drunk and entered himself in some contest. He started talking about his ferret and how big his ferret was and then started taking off his pants. Apparently, he was talking about his OTHER "ferret". EEK. That was definately something I didn't need to see.

Back to the story...

We stopped paying rent on the roach motel and it wasn't long til we got the eviction notice. It didn't matter since we'd already found a new, much cleaner, and slightly bigger apartment about 2 blocks away. We could see the Chesapeake Bay from our windows. It wasn't a pretty view, but it was sort of nice to be that near the water. K was still working as an electrician, re-habbing an old warehouse into condo's on the upper floors and medical offices on the ground floor. This is where he met Frank. Frank was his foreman, and became his best friend and main drug connection. The upside of that was that I became best friends with Frank's wife Judy. She was a sweety. We played a lot of Rummy together. Judy was amazing. She was pg and married to her first husband at the tender age of 12! She left him, came home to her mom's house, had a nervous breakdown, and married Frank around 15 yrs of age. They had 2 more children together, so she was a mother of 3 by the time she was 21. Frank used to tell us about when he tried to take her out to the movies. They wouldn't let her in to see an R rated movie! LMTO!! I miss Judy alot. I've tried to find her, but not had any luck.

Anyway, in our time living in that 2nd apartment, we also made friends with the couple living downstairs (I'll call them A & B because I really don't remember their names), with a drag queen (don't remember his name either) that lived in a room in the same building, and with a very large dude living about a block away named Big Ron. A&B were nice, also construction workers - carpenters I think. A was a VietNam veteran who got caught by a 'bouncing betty' bomb. B was devoted to him and really nice to me. There was also a little guy living in a room in the building named Weird Warren. He was truly weird but probably harmless. He lived on disability. One night, K beat the living snot out of WW. I don't remember what the offense was, but he really really beat the poor dude. I was afraid he was going to kill him and got K to finally leave him alone. WW's one ear was very badly beaten. I think part of it actually fell off and WW went deaf in it. His whole face was purple and swollen. He couldn't open his one eye for over a week. He either got very good at avoiding us or moved away.

Big Ron stopped by one Sunday for awhile. When he left, he must have decided to peep in a crack in the curtain on A&B's door. Next thing we heard was screeching and screaming. B saw him peeping and freaked out. They moved away the next week. Big Ron giggled about it for months. Jerk.

So, since the downstairs apt was now empty and actually had a bedroom separate from the living room, we moved downstairs. K lost interest in going to work. He sold plasma, we ate at a soup kitchen, he made me quit my job. We made friends with the couple who moved into the upstairs apt J & D. They were truck drivers. I don't remember the reasoning behind it, but we all moved out of the city, back up to Cecil County, and rented a campsite together. We fished to eat everyday and otherwise lived on K's unemployment. Lots and lost of craziness happened during the campground period.

More history...

K did his tech school training in Florida, then got stationed in Ft Huachuca (sp?) in Arizona. Teresa joined him there and was soon pg with his daughter T. He told me lots of crazy stories of things that happened while stationed there. The most disturbing one was about some mom-and-pop store owner that K robbed, then buried the body in several places out in the desert. I believe some version of that story really happened, which then just made me even more scared of him.

While he was stationed there in AZ, he got TDY (temporary duty) orders to Panama. For some reason, he was called to do phone installation work, which was his old job in the Marines??? Whatever. He partied his butt off there! Drugs were cheap and so were the women. He even frequented an area called Hollywood, which was off limits to military personel, sort of a shanty town.

When he got back to AZ, he really wanted out of the service, so he had Teresa "leave him" and go back east. That left him a single parent, which was an out with an honorable discharge. I'm not sure of the details after the Army discharge -- Teresa left him for real (she had full custody of T), he had several girlfriends, spent some time in jail, yadda yadda, met Wendy, then met me.

Now back to the story...

Interruption for a history lesson

I guess some history on Keith is essential to this story. He is the third of six children. Brother Joe, Becky, Keith, Scott, Danny, and Dale. Keith told me that Becky was sexually abused by their father for years. She told Joe and Keith at various times, but they didn't believe her. Neither did their mother. And so it continued until she was old enough to run away and join the military.

Keith married Susan when he was only 18 or so. He also joined the Marines Reserves as a telephone installation tech. He asked Susan to wait 5 yrs then they could have kids. She got pregnant within a year. Their son Tony was born. When he was only 3 months old, Keith was tripping on acid and swears he had a real conversation with Tony. He also gave him oral sex "so his first experience would be a loving one before some sick son of a bitch like his dad got to him" Ummm, right. Talk about sick logic.

Shortly after this, Keith started cheating on Susan with Teresa. He left Susan. At one point Susan tried to start crap with them and Teresa beat the living snot out of her. Keith and Susan divorced. He was UA (Unauthorized Absence - worse than AWOL) from the Marines. He married Teresa, with the same request of waiting 5 yrs before having kids. Then he made a deal with the military. He would join the Army on active duty if they would forgive his UA from the Marines.

Well the Army screwed up royally and put him Intel, like he didn't already think too much of himself.

Roach infested hole

That apartment we took in Fell's Point was really a tiny kitchen, a tiny bathroom, and a small living/bed room. There were roaches galore and we caught several mice. Keith drowned 1 and dropped the other out of the 4th floor window (torturing small animals anyone?) He "wallpapered" one whole wall with centerfold pinups from rags like Cheri.

I either rode the bus or walked to and from work. Keith hated that I worked on the 18th(?) floor of a bank and that he couldn't just pop in to see me. He had to be announced by the guards on the ground floor. In his mind, that announcement/ride up the elevator gave me time to get dressed and clean up all the sex scenes, etc because I was surely screwing all the guys in the office. In reality, I was bored out of my skull. I learned all the products quickly and became very proficient in processing the paperwork. Too proficient. I started calling off sick beyond my number of sick days and vacation days. I was counselled but too valuable to fire. I made friends with Jackie, one of the admin assistants. Keith partied and partied and partied.

Burger King came out with a promotion involving Pound Puppies. Keith wanted us to collect the whole set for a gift for his daughter. I had all but the last Puppie and the BK close to my office was sold out. It was the last day of the promo. I called around and found a BK that still had some. Now, this was in the days of cell phones that looked like suitcases, and our home phone was turned off due to lack of payment on the bills. So I had no way to contact Keith. I know it was his day to go cash his check at a bar, so I figured it would be okay if I chased down that last Puppie. Jackie and her husband gave me a ride. Mission success! I got the last one they had.

When I got home, I was all content and proud of myself. Keith was sitting there in the roach motel in the dark, drunk and fuming. He was sure I'd been out screwing around and verbally beat me to a pulp. He ate the cold BK food in a very disgusting display. Eventually, he was exhausted and passed out. I quietly laid down next to him and cried myself to sleep. Sometime in the night, he woke up in that drunken stupor mumbling something about having to take a piss. Well, he must not have realized where he really was (or maybe he did) because he pissed all over me.

Finally

Okay Linda. For you....

We only stayed in the house in Joppa Town a few months. We found out that his sister Becky was not paying the rent. I have no idea what she did with the money we gave her for our half. So, we all lost the house and Keith and I moved in with his parents. He got a better truck driving job out of Bmore. His parents' trailer was an hour or more from the truck yard so we soon moved in with his eldest brother's family just outside the city. The deal for staying there was that we didn't have to pay rent, but had to buy half the food for the house. Well Joe and Deb were some big people with 2 BIG boys and a small boy and small girl. It would have been cheaper to pay their rent and half the utilities! Keith was bringing home some decent money but working very very very long hours. His run was up to Long Island and he made it every single day of the work week.

Gee how long do you think that lasted? To his credit, he then took a job as an electrician for Benfield Electric (one of the bigger companies then) and I got a job at Md Nat'l bank. We moved out and got our own apartment in Fell's Point, which is a pretty cool neighborhood not far from downtown Bmore.

A new memory

I just remembered an incident that happened while we still lived in Lancaster, so call this a flashback…

Keith took me to see a movie at the old Brunswick Theater, which was on the 2nd floor of a hotel complex. After the movie, we wandered around the 2nd floor area, which was open to the courtyard below. He was teasing me for being scared of heights. I said that I wished I weren’t afraid, but didn’t really know how to get over it.

So, he picked me up (like a baby) and held me over the edge of the balcony, still laughing at me. I was a panicky mess, clinging to him for dear life.

Then he dropped me. I thought I was going to be in the hospital or the morgue for sure. It turned out that there was a large stone flower box hanging from the edge, just where he dropped me. That was just plain MEAN!